A Struggle For Rome Volume I Part 57

A great and unknown terror overcame her. She felt that she had been fearfully deceived; that some shocking secret lay behind. Her heart was full of unspeakable anxiety; and flight--flight from the rooms was her only thought.

But flight seemed impossible. The door now appeared to be only a thick marble slab like those on the right and left; even a needle could not have penetrated into the junctures. She looked desperately round the walls of the gallery, but met only the marble stare of the tritons and dolphins. At last her eyes rested upon a snake-encircled Medusa's head directly opposite and a scream of horror escaped her lips.

The face of the Medusa was pushed aside, and the oval opening beneath, the snaky hair was filled with a living countenance! Was it a human face?

The trembling woman clung to the marble bal.u.s.trade of the gallery, and bent, over it, staring at the apparition. Yes, it was the distorted features of Gothelindis! A h.e.l.l of hate and mockery flashed from the eyes.

Amalaswintha fell upon her knees and hid her face in her hands.

"_You_--you here?"

A hoa.r.s.e laugh was the reply.

"Yes, child of the Amelungs, I am here; to your ruin! Mine is this island; mine the house--it will become your grave--mine is Dolios, and all the slaves of Ca.s.siodorus; bought by me eight days ago. I have decoyed you here; I have followed you like your shadow. I have endured the torture of my hatred for long days and nights, in order to enjoy full revenge at last. I will revel for hours in your death-agony. I will see your tender frame shaken as with fever-frost, and your haughty features convulsed with terror. Oh, I will drink a sea of revenge!"

Amalaswintha rose from her knees wringing her hands.

"Revenge? For what? Why this deadly hatred?"

"Ah! can you ask? Certainly years have pa.s.sed, and the happy easily forget. But hate has a faithful memory. Have you forgotten how two young girls once played under the shade of the plantains in the meadow at Ravenna? They were the fairest among their play-fellows; both young, beautiful, and amiable. A royal child the one, the other a daughter of the Balthes. The girls were about to choose a queen of the games. They chose Gothelindis, for she was still more handsome than you, and not so tyrannical. And they chose her twice in succession. But the King's daughter stood near, devoured by ungovernable pride and envy, and when they chose me for the third time she took up a pair of sharp-pointed gardener's scissors----"

"Stop! Oh! be silent, Gothelindis!"

"And hurled it at me. It hit me. Screaming' with pain and bleeding, I fell to the ground, my whole cheek one yawning wound, and my eye, my eye pierced through! Ah! how it still pains, even to-day!"

"Forgive, pardon me, Gothelindis!" cried Amalaswintha. "You have pardoned me long ago."

"Forgive? I forgive you? Shall I forgive you when you have robbed me of my eye, and of all my beauty? You conquered for life! Gothelindis was no more dangerous as a rival. She lamented in secret; the disfigured girl hid from the eyes of mankind. And years pa.s.sed. Then there came to the court of Ravenna a n.o.ble Amelung from Spain; Eutharic with his dark eyes and tender soul. And he, himself sick, took pity upon the sick and half-blind girl. He spoke to her with affection and kindness; spoke to the ugly, disfigured creature whom all the others avoided. And it was decided--in order to eradicate the ancient enmity between our families, and to expiate old and new guilt--for Duke Alaric had been condemned in consequence of a secret and unproved accusation--that the poor ill-used daughter of the Balthes should become the wife of the n.o.blest of the Amelungs. But when you heard this, you, who had so terribly disfigured me, were resolved to deprive me also of my lover! Not out of jealousy, no; not because you loved him, no; but from mere pride. Because you were determined to keep the first man in the kingdom and the heir to the crown to yourself. And you succeeded; for your father could deny you nothing, and Eutharic soon forgot his compa.s.sion for the one-eyed girl, when the hand of the beautiful Amalaswintha was offered to him.

In recompense--or was it only in mockery?--they gave me, too, to an Amelung; to Theodahad, that miserable coward?"

"Gothelindis, I swear to you, I never suspected that you loved Eutharic. How could I----"

"To be sure! how could you believe that the disfigured girl could place her heart so high? Oh, you cursed woman, if you had really loved him, and had made him happy--I could have forgiven all! But you never loved him; you are only capable of ambition! His lot with you was misery. For years I saw him wasting by your side, oppressed, unloved, chilled to the very soul by your coldness. Grief soon killed him. You!

you have robbed me of my lover and brought him to the grave with sorrow--revenge! revenge for him!"

And the lofty dome echoed with the cry: "Revenge! Revenge!"

"Help!" cried Amalaswintha, and ran despairingly round the circle of the gallery, beating the smooth walls with her hands.

"Aye! call! call! here no one can hear you but the G.o.d of Revenge! Do you think I have bridled my hate for months in vain? How often, how easily could I have reached you, with dagger or poison, at Ravenna! But no; I have decoyed you here. At the monument of my murdered cousins; an hour ago at your bedside; I with difficulty restrained my uplifted hand--but slowly, inch by inch, shall you die. I will watch for hours the growing agony of your death."

"Terrible! Oh, terrible!"

"What are hours compared with the long years during which I was martyred by the thought of my disfigurement, of your beauty and your possession of my lover! But you shall repent it!"

"What will you do?" cried the terrified woman, again and again seeking some outlet in the walls.

"I will drown you, slowly and surely, in the waterworks of this bath, which your friend Ca.s.siodorus built. You do not know what tortures of jealousy and impotent rage I endured in this house when your wedding with Eutharic was celebrated, and I was compelled to serve in your train. In this room, you proud woman, I unloosed your sandals, and dried your fair limbs--in this room you shall die?"

She touched a spring in the wall.

The floor of the basin, the round metal plate, divided into two halves, which slid slowly into the walls on the right and left.

With horror the imprisoned woman looked down from the narrow gallery into the chasm thus opened at her feet.

"Remember that day in the meadow!" cried Gothelindis; and in the lower story the sluices were suddenly opened, and the waters of the lake rushed in, roaring and hissing, and rose higher and higher with fearful rapidity.

Amalaswintha saw certain death before her. She saw the impossibility of escape, or of softening her fiendish enemy by prayers. At this crisis, the hereditary courage of the Amelungs returned to her; she composed herself, and was reconciled to her fate.

She descried, amid the numerous reliefs of mythological subjects near her, a representation of the death of Christ on the right of the entrance. The sight strengthened her mind; she threw herself upon her knees before the marble cross, clasped it with both ands, and prayed quietly with closed eyes, while the water rose and rose; it already splashed upon the steps of the gallery.

"You pray, murderess? Away from the cross!" cried Gothelindis, enraged; "think of the three dukes!"

Suddenly all the dolphin and triton heads on the right side of the octagon began to spout streams of hot rater; white steam rushed out of the pipes.

Amalaswintha sprang up and ran to the left side of the gallery.

"Gothelindis, I forgive you! Kill me, but forgive me also!"

And the water rose and rose; it already covered the topmost step of the bath, and slowly wetted the floor of the gallery.

And now the streaming water-pipes spouted upon Amalaswintha from the left also. She took refuge in the middle of the gallery, directly opposite the Medusa, the only place where no steam from the hot-water pipe could reach her.

If she mounted the spring-board, which was placed here, she could respite her life for some time longer. Gothelindis seemed to expect that she would do so, and to revel in the prospect of the lengthened torture of the agonised woman.

The water already rushed over the marble flooring of the gallery and laved the feet of Amalaswintha. She ran quickly up the brown and shining wooden steps, and leaned over the railing of the bridge.

"Hear me, Gothelindis! my last prayer! not for myself, but for my people, for _our_ people. Petros will destroy them, and Theodahad----"

"Yes, I know that the kingdom is your last anxiety! Despair. It is lost! These foolish Goths, who have always preferred the Amelungs to the Balthes, are sold and betrayed by the Amelungs. Belisarius approaches, and there is no one to warn them."

"You err, satanic woman; they _are_ warned! I, their Queen, have warned them! Hail to my people! Destruction to their enemies! and may G.o.d have mercy on my soul!" and she suddenly leapt from the spring-board into the water, which closed whirling over her head.

Gothelindis looked at the place which her victim had occupied a moment before.

"She has disappeared," she said. Then she looked at the water--on the surface floated Amalaswintha's kerchief.

"Even in death this woman conquers me," said Gothelindis slowly. "How long was my hate, and how short my revenge!"

CHAPTER VII.

A few days after these occurrences, there were a.s.sembled in the apartments of the Byzantine amba.s.sador at Ravenna a number of distinguished Romans of worldly and ecclesiastical rank. The Bishops Hypatius and Demetrius from the Eastern Empire were also present.

Great excitement, mixed with alarm and anger, was visible on all faces, as Petros, the rhetorician, concluded his address in these words:

"It is for this reason, reverend bishops of the East and West, and you, n.o.ble Romans, that I have a.s.sembled you here. I protest loudly and solemnly, in the name of the Emperor, against all secret acts of cunning or force which may have been practised against the n.o.ble lady.